broken finally out of Evan in that first murderous lunge, leaving
him lighter and cooler and quicker upon his feet. He fell to
again, fiercely still, but now with a fierce caution. The next
moment Turnbull lunged; MacIan seemed to catch the point and
throw it away from him, and was thrusting back like a
thunderbolt, when a sound paralysed him; another sound beside
their ringing weapons. Turnbull, perhaps from an equal
astonishment, perhaps from chivalry, stopped also and forebore to
send his sword through his exposed enemy.

"What's that?" asked Evan, hoarsely.

A heavy scraping sound, as of a trunk being dragged along a
littered floor, came from the dark shop behind them.

"The old Jew has broken one of his strings, and he's crawling
about," said Turnbull. "Be quick! We must finish before he gets
his gag out."

"Yes, yes, quick! On guard!" cried the Highlander. The blades
crossed again with the same sound like song, and the men went to
work again with the same white and watchful faces. Evan, in his
impatience, went back a little to his wildness. He made
windmills, as the French duellists say, and though he was
probably a shade the better fencer of the two, he found the
other's point pass his face twice so close as almost to graze his
cheek. The second time he realized the actual possibility of
defeat and pulled himself together under a shock of the sanity of
anger. He narrowed, and, so to speak, tightened his operations:
he fenced (as the swordsman's boast goes), in a wedding ring; he